The present invention relates to vehicle drive systems in a broad sense, i.e. machineries suited to all types of wheeled vehicles, but also to pleasure boats and various types of commerical vessels and is related to the following copending applications filed simultaneously herewith: Ser. No. 149,759, entitled "A Vehicle Drive Plant;" and Ser. No. 149,761, entitled "A Vehicle Transmission".
A car factory with mixed production must have a number of engine types and sizes in production simultaneously in order to meet current needs within the passenger car, truck, bus and industrial vehicle sectors. Passenger car engine series are in most cases significantly longer than the series for truck engines, and there are thus more possibilities for making the production more efficient. The costs per horsepower are therefore much lower for passenger car engines than for truck engines, for example. The latter are in general more powerful per unit than the former, often by a factor of two to four. It is quite obvious that design, production, stocks of spare parts and service in general increase appreciably with the number of engine types, or sizes, available at the same time. It is not uncommon for a medium sized car manufacturer to have a score of basic types.
Great simplification and a significant reduction of production and spare parts costs would be achieved, if a small number, preferably only two or three, of basic engine sizes could be used instead of a number of passenger car engines and a large number of industrial vehicle and truck engines, and such basic engines could be simply and efficiently combined to produce a large number of different engine packages, with varying horsepowers, essentially covering the entire horsepower range of interest.
If an internal combustion engine is selected, which covers the lowest output required, e.g. 75 HP, it can be manufactured in a standard model A, and a supercharged model B, which produces, say for the sake of simplicity, 100 HP. The standard and the supercharged version of the basic engine will be identical with respect to about 90% of their components.
The use of these engines in a conventional manner provides two models of 75 HP and 100 HP, respectively, based upon a single basic engine.
Combining according to the invention 2 A-engines produces 150 HP, combining A+B produces 175 HP, and the combination 2B produces 200 HP. Combining 3 A-engines produces 225 HP, and so on up to 400 HP (4 B-engines) in steps of 25 HP. By using basic engines of 100 and 150 HP, respectively, the horsepower range from 100 to 600 HP can be covered in steps of 50 HP.
For combining two or more engines it will be necessary to use some kind of base block containing the gearing transferring the outputs of the engines to the common output shaft.
One aim of the present invention is to propose a base block of strong and simple design, which facilitates mounting in the vehicle as well as servicing and maintenance.